With an Accent from Holland

Pilates, Brother, Wollstonecraft

Today I had quite a busy day, but I’ll start with telling about yesterday. I went to work, as usual, and I worked with my new colleague. She was already there, just for one day, because she’ll start officially next week. I had to explain a lot to her, but she understood most of it (I hope) and I had fun working with her. I told her a lot more than I intended to tell her, especially on our first day of working together, but she asked for most of the things and I just answered her questions basically. I’m glad she’s going to be my new colleague.
Today I started with Pilates. We had Pilates with the ball again, which is always fun. My teacher didn’t even mention me not being in class last Saturday; she only said that I had to take another class someday.
Then I went home, I had some lunch and I went to the supermarket to buy dinner for tonight.
At 2 pm I had an appointment with one of the Brothers. It was a really nice meeting. He told me that I need to talk to my priest and ask him if he’s all right with me being guided by a brother and then having the sacrament in the church. We also started with the studying a bit as we looked at the beginning of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I was really happy after this meeting. The Brother is really nice and he really listens to me and it seems that he understands me.
The only thing is that I just saw on the website of my church that next Saturday they’re starting a course for people – young adults and adults - who have to prepare for the Sacrament of Confirmation. It takes like 8 Saturdays and then the Confirmation will take place in November. That’s about the speed that I want for me as well. I guess I’m gonna have to call my church administration tomorrow and discuss this with them. I’m not sure at the moment what will be the right way to choose.
Tonight I had Linguistics and Literature classes. I was late for the first class, because some fool left a suitcase at a suspicious place and all trains were stopped so the police could investigate what was in it. I arrived in Leiden too late and was like 10 minutes late for the first lesson. Luckily the teacher wasn’t mad or anything, he didn’t even say anything, so that’s good. I didn’t really like the Literature class. We were discussing Mary Wollstonecraft and I read the literature fairly well, also because I liked her style of writing. This woman had a very turbulent life and as a result of that felt pretty lonely and depressed some of the time. So when she went to Norway and Denmark and looked at the nature there, she was really impressed by it and wrote this down in a romantic manner, which was her timeframe. But, when my teacher discussed these passages in class, he made it sound really funny and the whole class laughed at it. I didn’t think this was fair, but I didn’t dare speak up either. As a person, I could relate to Mary Wollstonecraft and I understood why she would feel this way. And it might be a bit overdone, over the top and melodramatic, but sometimes you just feel that way. I felt like the whole class was ridiculing her and I didn’t like that. They also couldn’t understand why a feminist like her could cling on to a very bad relationship with an unfaithful, disloyal man. I’m convinced that she was in love and that she wanted to establish a family with this man. She even had his baby. I just didn’t agree with the tenor of the class.
Tomorrow I’ll have to work and if there’s time I’m gonna call the church probably.

posted by Charda @ 26.9.06